Leesa folded her arms across her chest and shot her a hostile look.
Wendy deposited the extra bread and cheese and sparkling water on the kitchen table. “I’ll leave these right there.”
Hakiam stood holding Malikia and biting his tongue. Why did his cousin have to be so rude?
Wendy kissed Malikia’s hand and waved goodbye. “See you, sweetie.”
Hakiam put Malikia in Leesa’s arms and told Wendy, “I’ll walk you to your car.”
When Hakiam came back, Leesa had relegated the baby back to her crib and still had an evil look on her face.
“I don’t want you to take Malikia out again.”
Hakiam stepped back. “Oh, really?”
“I don’t ever want—”
He held up his hand. “Yeah, yeah.”
“Well, you better do what I say. I don’t want that girl around my daughter anymore.”
“Why?”
“I ain’t got to give you a why, just do it.”
He nodded knowingly at Leesa’s naked jealousy and did an exaggerated salute. “Yes, sir.”
28
The next time they went out, Hakiam and Wendy wandered about all afternoon until the combination of hunger and frugality drew him to a sandwich board. It promised shrimp for $2.99.
“You like shrimp?” he asked.
“Who doesn’t?” she answered.
Unlike that coffee shop where the fragrance of cinnamon and vanilla swirled in the atmosphere, in this place, the odor of frying grease hung in the air. It was stuffy and crowded.
“How many shrimp do you get?” Hakiam asked the man at the register.
“About ten. No, maybe twenty.”
“Twenty shrimp for two-ninety-nine?” Wendy asked.
“Yep,” the man said.
Hakiam held up two fingers, signaling that he’d take two orders.
Wendy stopped him, saying that if there were twenty, why didn’t they just split it.
“Would you like to make it a combo for just a dollar more?” the guy at the counter asked.
Hakiam thought of his stash, now down to forty-something dollars. That was all he had to his name.
“You want to combo it?” the guy repeated.
A nearly grown man trying to take a girl out with a pathetic $43, eating $2.99 shrimp.
“No,” he said.
He handed the man three of his forty-three dollars.
“It’ll be a little more than that,” the guy said. “You’re downtown. Seven percent sales tax.”
Before he could dig back into his funds, Wendy shoved a twenty at him and then flipped a quarter at the cashier.
“I can’t take money from you,” Hakiam said.
“Why not?”
“Where I’m from men pay the way.”
“Where are you from, 1957?”
The cashier smirked at that.
When their order came up, they took it to a booth. Hakiam reached for a shrimp. It was hot. Not spicy hot, asbestos-glove-needing hot.
Wendy squinted at the food and noticed something. “These shrimp aren’t deveined,” she said as she dug into one, taking off the breading, only to get black waste material under her fingernails.
“What does that mean?” he asked.
“It means these shrimp are laced with crap!” she exclaimed.
“You’re bourgie, you let a little dookie scare you,” Hakiam said as he rooted in the bag for another shrimp.
She grabbed a napkin to clean her hands. “Maybe we should take this back.”
Hakiam finished that shrimp and reached for another. “What’s the big deal? It’s natural.”
“You’re going to sit there and defend shit?”
“I guess you feel too good to eat this.”
She nodded. “Yes, I’m too good to eat shit, Hakiam. Yes, I am.”
As they argued, Hakiam kept right on eating. Her contrary words didn’t spoil his appetite. If there was food in front of him, he couldn’t let it go to waste.
He balled up the wrapper and they left.
The sky had changed from a dull gray to a sunny yellow, but they were still storming at each other.
“Make sure you never take Malikia to a place like that. She’s liable to get Listeria.”
“She could get what now?” Hakiam asked.
“Listeria. There are one hundred known cases a year. It’s a foodborne illness and the effects—”
“I’ll take your word for it, Wendy.”
“Be sure you tell her mother about that.”
“Her mom won’t listen to you. She doesn’t even want you taking Malikia places anymore.”
Wendy’s eyebrows knitted together. “Me? What did I do? I’ve been very nice to that little girl.”
“That’s the point.”
“What’s the point?”
“Nothing,” Hakiam all but grunted. “Look, let’s just change the subject.”
“No, let’s stay on this subject. Your cousin is using that sweet little baby as a pawn. She doesn’t really think that I would ever try to hurt her daughter, does she?”
“Let’s just change the subject.”
“I don’t see why she would forbid me to see Malikia. What was the reason she gave?”
“You’re like a dog with a bone, Wendy. Let it go. Look, you and Leesa are pretty far apart—”
“Well, so are you and I. So are every single person in the world and everybody else.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Yes, it is. She’s trying to make it so complex, but all it boils down to is that someone cares for her daughter and she doesn’t like it. What sense does that make? If I were a single mother, I’d take help from wherever I could get it!”
“She gets help. She don’t have to pay for hardly anything.”
“Well, the government won’t give her kid a hug,” Wendy said.
Hakiam had no comment on that, and the conversation stalled. They were on Twenty-second Street, near where she had parked her car. She glanced down at her watch and made an excuse to escape.
“I better go,” she said. “I’ve got things to do at home.”
“What things?”
“College applications.” She blurted out the first thing that came into her mind.
“Where are you applying?” he asked.
She sighed. She really didn’t want to start up a new conversation. “Lately, I’ve been looking at Howard.”
He stopped in his tracks. “You want to go to a black school?” There was more than a trace of horror in his voice.
She threw her shoulders back and squared off with him. “Yes,” she said.
“Wendy, you know what people say about black colleges.”
“The blacker the college, the greater the knowledge,” Wendy said, telling Hakiam what she had seen on a T-shirt once.
“No, people will think you went there because you couldn’t get in no place else.”
“Is that what you think?”
“That’s what people would think.”
She searched his face. “Hakiam, I’m asking, what do you think?”
He’d been blunt up to this point and didn’t stop there. “Well, I know one thing: I wouldn’t be going to no black school if was smart like you.”
29
“It’s like I’m dating my dad, Erin.”
“I think that’s illegal in Pennsylvania.”
Wendy and Erin veered into a coffee shop on the corner of Sixteenth and Walnut Street. They stood at the counter and studied the menu for a few moments.
Wendy ordered a mocha, and Erin had a chai. They split a strawberry scone.
“I’m between two fires. I get burned whether I choose Hakiam or my dad.”
“Maybe you should give him another chance,” Erin said, brushing her shoulder-length golden hair away from her collar.
“Which him?”
“Both.”
“How can I do that? They’re at opposite ends of the spectrum.” Wendy drank her
mocha. “But then they aren’t. Why are both of them against black colleges?”
Erin shrugged. “Maybe they’re both uninformed. You said your dad grew up poor, and Hakiam is poor. They may have more in common than you think.”
Wendy found herself wishing she had never met Hakiam. Why did she have to volunteer at that community center in the first place? Instead of tutoring, she could have learned a new language. Greek or Arabic. German or Mandarin. Anything.
“You know, on paper this is supposed to work out. How many times have you heard that opposites attract: Mr. Wild and Crazy meets Miss Predictable and Boring?”
Erin patted her hand. “You’re not boring, Wendy.”
“You’re lucky, Erin. You and Kyle. You two can date and it doesn’t turn into sociology class. I’m stuck.”
“No, you’re not. You can date anyone you want.”
Wendy laughed out loud. “Everything I do is a statement. If I date a poor black guy, that means something; if I date a well-off black guy, that means something; if I date a white guy—”
“You can date whoever you want. Nobody but ignorant people think that way.”
“I just can’t go out with a guy or pick a school. Whatever I choose to wear or say, I’m either a sellout or a militant.”
“You’re Wendy Anderson. End of story.”
Wendy twirled her finger in the air, feigning being impressed. “I’m Wendy Anderson—whoopee!”
“Just be yourself,” Erin said, her light blue eyes boring into Wendy’s brown ones. “That’s good enough for me.”
Wendy smiled at her friend.
Erin winked at her. “Now, as for Hakiam. You should take out a piece of paper and put on one side what you like about him and on the other side what you don’t.”
“What’s that going to do?”
“It will give you an inventory. You really need to sort things out with him.”
“I don’t know, Erin. I don’t know if that’ll help or not.”
“Well, why don’t you let me meet him? It’ll be fun, plus I want to meet him. And you owe me a double date.”
With that, Wendy agreed, figuring she might as well enjoy having a boyfriend while she had one.
30
Wendy could run, but she couldn’t hide. No matter how badly he pissed her off, Hakiam was bound to see her at the tutoring center.
He went up to where she was seated and tapped her chair. “What you reading about?”
She put down her psychology book, marking her place with a pen. “I have a Freud test next week. But I really think he’s outdated now. All that mumbo jumbo about the id and the superego. And don’t get me started on all his mother issues.”
Hakiam pulled up a chair. “I got mother issues.”
Wendy put her hand under her chin. “Do tell?”
“My mom was selfish. Everything good was for her. She used to hide all the Frosted Flakes in her bedroom. She left the no-name shit in the kitchen for us.”
Wendy laughed out loud. “I’m sorry, Hakiam, but I outgrew Tony the Tiger by the time I was ten.”
“She was evil and stingy. She never gave us anything nice to eat or to wear. Everything was for her, her, her. She didn’t give a damn about my sisters and me.”
“Sisters? You have sisters?”
“I had five. Now I got four.”
“What happened?” Wendy asked.
“Adasida got shot. She was getting her hair braided. It was a stray bullet. It came through the window.”
“Oh, my God,” she said. “That’s horrible, Hakiam.”
“Yeah.”
“How old was she?”
His eyes flickered with anger, then went back to blank, dense sadness. “Twelve. She was my second-oldest sister.”
Wendy lowered her head and shook it.
“After that, my mom started farming us out.”
She looked up at him. “What does that mean?”
“She split us up. That was about the same time she caught my oldest sister, Rashida, in bed with this guy down the block. He was forty. My mom said it was too much for her to handle with us getting out of control.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. It seems like she would want to keep her family close after a tragedy like that, not push them away. And your mom should have reported that jerk down the block to the police. If Rashida was under eighteen, what he did was statutory rape,” she told him. “People like that should be locked away. No wonder you left Cincinnati, Hakiam.”
“A lot of bad things happened to me in my life, that’s just a couple of them,” he said matter-of-factly, with that same desperate stare from hollow eyes. “Besides, that happened eight years ago. There’s not a damn thing you can do about it now.”
Wendy nodded, not so much to say she agreed as to say she understood. There was so much she wanted to say to Hakiam, but it all came out as silence.
And more silence.
“Why did your mom let you move here?” Wendy finally asked.
“She ain’t have no say about it. I moved out on my own.”
“You mean you ran away?” Wendy asked.
Hakiam’s face was closed. “No, I just left.”
“Why would your mother—”
“I aged out,” Hakiam said.
“You’re talking about foster care, aren’t you?” Wendy asked Hakiam.
He nodded.
“Well, what in the hell were you doing there? Where was your mother and how could you age out? You’re still under eighteen!”
“I only had a year to go,” Hakiam said. “I didn’t want to wait till the last minute.”
“I just don’t understand your mom,” Wendy said. “Where was she during all this? Did she just walk away from all of you?”
“She put us in the system. You can do that—if you’re tired of raising kids, you can give them to the state.”
“That shouldn’t be allowed. If you’re a parent, that’s not like a part-time job. You can’t just walk anytime you want. That’s insane.”
Wendy noted now that Hakiam’s eyes showed no recognizable sign of feeling.
“So, what’s foster care like?” she asked.
“You’re the smart one, Wendy. What do you think foster care is like?”
Her eyebrows slid upward as she said, “That bad, huh?” She stood up and walked over to the water cooler. She brought back two cups and handed him one.
“You’ve really been through it,” Wendy said, then tossed her head back and drank her water in one swallow.
He did the same.
They sat facing each other and she took his hand, but after a while he removed her hand from on top of his.
Then he pulled out his American history textbook and began to read.
Not to be outdone, she opened up her psych book again, shutting him out from view but not from thought.
After twenty minutes of feigned concentration, he began to get restless and drummed his fingers on the table.
She reached out to still his hand. She cocked one eyebrow. “You free Saturday?”
He nodded.
“Ever been on a double date?”
He shook his head.
“We shouldn’t have to sneak around. You mind meeting my father before we go?”
He shrugged.
She held out her hand for him to shake. He brought her in for a kiss instead.
31
“Hakiam’s downstairs.”
“And?” her father asked, already in his pajamas and bathrobe at just past seven.
“Aren’t you coming down to meet him?”
“Why should I? I’m familiar with his type.”
“That’s rude.”
“I’m allowed to be rude, I’m your father. Pass me the TV Guide.”
“As if you don’t already know what’s on television every minute of every day,” she said, but handed him the magazine.
“Thank you,” he said, and paged through till he got to the right day and time.
�
�Oh, good,” he said. “Cary Grant is on. Now, he was someone with real class.”
Wendy rolled her eyes.
Her dad clicked on the television. “I have tried my whole life to escape people like Hakiam, and you have the unmitigated gall to bring someone like that right into this house.” He took a sip of his tea and told her, “You cannot lift him up. He can only drag you down.”
Wendy turned to leave.
“I hope that you didn’t expect me to support this thug crush.”
“What I expected of you was that you try to understand me for once.”
“I always listen to you, Wendy. He seems to delight in giving SparkNote versions of how bad his life is.”
“No, you don’t, Dad. You don’t listen and you don’t even try to understand. You just sit in this room every night and watch old movies. Well, I want to relate to people, not a TV set.”
“Wendy, I have done my best to put you in a nice neighborhood, and what do you do?”
“Hakiam has never pulled me away from you. There is no one pulling me away from you besides you, Dad.” She paused. “You made it out of the slums—why don’t you have any faith that someone else can too? Why are you so anxious to slam the door behind you?”
“It’s because I slammed the door that I was able to make it out. But you can’t see that. Because comfort is all you’ve known.”
“There’s all different types of comfort, Dad.”
“Look, I’m not going to continue to go round and round. Respect these gray hairs on my head, young lady,” he said, pulling at his salt-and-pepper hair.
“You’re impossible, Dad.”
“That may be true,” he said, looking over the top of his glasses at her. “Erin’s meeting you there?”
“Yes, Dad.”
“Well, be sure to come straight home afterward.”
“Yes, Dad.”
She went back downstairs. Hakiam was right where she’d left him, sitting in a big chair, staring at nothing in particular. She was expecting him to at least have a so-I-guess-he-ain’t-coming-down look on his face. Instead, he wore no expression whatsoever. Right by him on the breakfront was the family photo of her, her mom, and her dad when they were one small happy family. Hakiam didn’t even seem interested in that.
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